


Rebel angel

by imsfire



Category: Der Himmel über Berlin | Wings of Desire (1987), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: AKA, Angels, F/M, Feels, Romance, Wings of Desire - Freeform, all the feels good grief, and feels about the struggle of being immortal and detached from this earthly world, angels falling in love, dreaming of what real life might feel like, in this case it's a fusion of Rogue one with Der Himmel uber Berlin, one of those cases of, the au nobody asked for, whacking you all in the face with all the eternal love feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-25 21:23:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12541524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: "I’m Jyn, Jyn Erso.  Also known as the Rebel Angel of the High Wire..."Rebelcaptain/ Wings of Desire mashup: Cassian is an angel, Jyn is a trapeze artist in the circus.





	Rebel angel

They are quiet figures, the rebel angels, silent and grave in their nondescript clothes, their heavy dark coats.  They blend in, they vanish; most of the world never sees them at all.  Children notice them most often, and those near to death; but the touch of their hands can be felt by anyone, the murmur of their voices speaking low can catch and save a heart desperate for hope.

So, the young man in the street in the cold remembers suddenly how the old city of his childhood used to shine at the winter festival; how the monks went by chanting, scarlet robes bright against the sandstone; how the lanterns they carried swung in the frosty air.  And though all of it is gone now, gone so utterly that it can never be rebuilt, still somehow the knowledge that once it _was_ , that beauty, that resonant history, that freedom, gives him hope; because the world has been fair and just, somewhere, and so one day somewhere it can be beautiful again.  And in the greatest hour of fear, another hears a voice that says “you can make this right, if you just listen to what’s in your heart.”  He wants to do right and only fear has stayed his hand, until that moment and that voice.  “Rebellions are built on hope” it says, and there’s even a smile in the sound; and the shame falls away, and his sick heart rises as though someone has taken his hand and lifted him up.

And away across miles and streets and dark rooftops, another man trapped  in doubt and raging with frustration is reminded, “Follow the one whose path is clear, the one who shines”; and in the darkness of pain, praying for the first time in years, he hears another voice joined to his, a voice which says with him “I am one with the Force, the Force is with me.” 

And farther off yet, a mother chooses death willingly to save her family, and feels a presence at her back, steadying her, keeping her brave till the last. 

The warmth of their touch stays all day, when they pass by, and the courage they lend is strong and does not waver, it holds true to the very end.

They move amongst the worlds and the times and the numberless days; they bear witness to the fair and the dark, to that which is lost and that which endures.  They love the living too much, it’s said, and so they are named rebel, because they would not rise into purity above and leave chaotic life to fend for itself.  They have been with us since before the beginning, since the rocks first settled and the hot sea vents first stirred and churned forth life; since the rain first sweetened and the grass first grew.  They have been here since the first trees scattered their pale leaves upon the water.

There is an old man, remembering the great city of his youth, its squares and bridges, its shrines and bustling markets and long colonnades; remembering the rich land around it, the forests, the wild birds calling; and the people who worked and sang and made that bright city and that fair land, his friends, his comrades, his family.  He’ll fight to his last breath to keep the memory of that place alive, to resist those who would send it to oblivion.  His angel goes by his side, and remembers with him.

There are infants watching, wide-eyed and unsurprised, as the dark figures pass amongst crowds; and the angels are unseen when the children close their eyes. 

There is a baby crying to be born; an angel’s hand comforts the new life, eases the mother’s pain, the father’s fear. 

They are all around, unseen, loving, never leaving us.

There is a young woman standing on a stage.  Music plays, and with a quiet face she waits as a rope drops down from high above her; she clasps it and climbs, and high above the audience she flies and spins and swings, unprotected, dancing from the hanging rope to the trapeze, the trapeze to the slack wire; circling around in a dance of hundred graceful dangers.  There is no safety net.  Her foster father watches from the darkened stage below, and bites his lip, in silence.

He could shout “Stop!” – could tell her sternly and with love that her act is too dangerous, now, that she must accept safer choices instead.  But he does not.  He watches her.

The angel watching him knows that the old man still cares for her as much as he has ever done for anyone, living or dead.  But all he will say to the woman when her performance is over is that she must do more, and better, she must be faster and more fluent, must be yet more practised, yet more dedicated to her art.  She is too valuable an artist to be simply a daughter to him anymore.

She is very alone.  She can no longer trust his love, now that he silences it and drives her on; and she has had no-one else to trust at all, for so long.  She is beginning to fear, the young acrobat; to know there’s a day coming when her hand will fail and her grip will be too weak.  When the spotlights will lose her as she falls from the bright wire.

The angel hears her heart, and fears. 

**

It’s a quiet place, where they meet, a scrap of neglected woodland beside a river.  All around them, the world hums with life, but here it is as if a thousand years fall away, and they remember how their mission began, those thousand years and many thousands more in the past, with the act of witnessing, and the pledge to give hope.

“The whole of eternity, always giving light, giving hope,” says the one who watched over the acrobat.  His blue coat hangs open, loose on his slim frame. “Ah, Bodhi, is it possible to be weary of doing the right thing?  Doing always what is needed to keep the living safe?”

“How can you be weary?”  The other one, who devotes himself with as much certainty to each soul he hears, to the young revolutionary and the old man remembering.  His face is strong-featured and his large eyes are sad.  “I know how endless our task can seem.  But you have always been the strongest of us all, Cassian.”

“I do not know what this is, if it isn’t weariness.  Something in me is breaking.  I fear it is my heart.”

They watch a kingfisher take off from the branch of a tree.  It strikes the jewelled water like an arrow and rises again.  Killing to bring life.

“I am so tired,” says the one in the blue coat, the one called Cassian.  “I dream of it, Bodhi.  Rest.  Sleep.  Being at peace; being in life, in a life that will pass and end; living and dying, being able to sleep instead of waking and bearing witness for eternity.”

Bodhi sighs.  His coat is grey and his smile is gentle and unhappy.  “But that is why we’re here, that has always been our mission.  Our purpose under heaven.  To witness, to bring support and hope, to all that grows and changes and lives.  Not to grow or change ourselves but to memorialise the courage with which life carries on.  The leaves that grow in ruins and wreckage, the children who play on bombsites.  The love that blooms in unseen places and in times where there seems to be no hope.  We witness it and give it purpose.”

“And I am so weary of it, my constant purpose, and my constancy.  What can it be like, Bodhi, really to _feel_ that love?  To feel that hope, that urge to keep growing, to live?  We honour it and nurture it but we’ve never felt it.  Don’t you ever wonder what it’s like?”

Bodhi shakes his head.  His eyes are increasingly sad.

In the theatre, where the white stage glows under spotlights, the acrobat is rehearsing a new act.  Without her bright make-up now, her costume of sparkles and ribbons, feathered cap and boots, she’s a quiet figure.  You’d hardly notice her.  Brown hair, pale skin, green eyes; and the shadows beneath those eyes betray how tired she is, though she works tirelessly.  The figure in the blue coat watches her from the shadows as she swings back and forth on a trapeze, practising a manoeuvre that leaves her hanging by one knee, seemingly on the very verge of falling.

The stage is hard white stone, and forty feet down.

She swings herself up and tries again.  The move isn’t easy.  He can feel her frustration.  It still looks wrong, it isn’t smooth or elegant or magical yet, and she repeats it and repeats it, frowning at herself.  Her muscles ache and her mind is tense with dissatisfaction but she goes on and on. 

Each time, it looks as though she may fall.

No-one is watching but the unseen man, the angel in the shadows.  Each time her hand slips or her foot twists at the point of contact, he tenses with her.  He is always watching, as tireless as she, as she fights on through her tiredness, seeking victory over gravity and herself.

**

Bodhi is in another quiet place, liminal, empty and full of air and space and stored wisdom; a library, dark and shut in the hours of night.  He talks to his fellow rebels; and all of them the while are listening without judgement to the countless dreams in the city around them.

“I am concerned about Cassian,” he tells them.  His voice is as gentle as ever.  “He says he’s tired, that he’s losing his sense of purpose.”

“He’s one of the best of us,” murmurs a figure whose coat is dull green.  “His work has been of incalculable value.”

A taller figure clad in sombre black remarks almost dryly “Really?  I could attempt a calculation if you wish.”  The green-clad one purses his lips in a faint smile, runs a hand over thinning hair.  Says nothing.

“This is sad news,” says one who is the most calm of them all.  She wears white and carries herself regally; but her face is mournful beneath its hauteur. “Do you believe we will lose him?”

“I believe he’s searching for something.  A reason to go on hoping, maybe.  If he finds renewed strength, I am certain that he’ll recognise it, hold to it.  He doesn’t want to fail, of that I’m certain.  But our mission – we all know how hard it is sometimes.  If he does not find some cause for hope –“ Bodhi shakes his head sadly.

“He has never given us reason to doubt him.  His commitment has always been one hundred percent,” says the tall dark one. 

The angel in green smiles, dry, rueful, grateful.

From one side, a figure with close-cropped hair and blind-blue eyes speaks. “His heart is growing.  Perhaps it grows too large for him to bear.”

The white-clad angel sighs.  “And if he doesn’t find the thing he’s seeking?”

“I don’t think he knows what he is seeking,” Bodhi tells them.  “But even if he finds a new hope, it may not bring him back to us.  It may – it may take him further.  It may take him away.”

“He hungers for life?”

“He told me he wonders what it’s like, yes…”

The angel in green hangs his head for a moment and then says wearily “He must find his own way.  We must allow him that.”

The one in white nods.  “Either to stay with us, or to seek a new path.”

“I’ll miss him,” says Bodhi.  He too bows his head.

He runs out, as the gathering disperses; to pass through quiet homes, to watch over those who sleep and cherish their dreams, and touch the trembling hands of those who labour or lie watchful all night.  He is there as the old man remembers the lights of his youth and the other, long-gone city that was so fair; he is there when the young man rises up to begin another day of fighting the battle that is life, for the poor, the dispossessed, the ones left behind, who still strive to grow and live, and not to yield.

**

The acrobat has put on all her spangles and her silver for the midnight show.  She looks into a broken scrap of mirror, smiles hopefully at the reflection.  Puts on her cap and clips it down firmly over her netted and pinned hair.  She is all gleaming fabric and painted feathers, spangles and beads; ribbons stream from her waist when she stands up.  She eyes her reflection one last time.

In her mind, someone speaks, saying the one word _Hope_ so that she starts and stares.  “Hope?” she says aloud, to the young, tired face she sees looking through the make-up and glitter.  Her voice is half longing, half salty self-defence.  The mirror does not answer.

She checks her ribbons are tangle-free and hurries to the wings.

From behind the mirror, a quiet shadow in blue follows her.

Her performance tonight is a thing of miracles.  She dances first, circling the stage, leaping from the hands of supporting artists in black and gold body stockings; flying from one lift, one partnering embrace, to the next, then conquering them one by one in a balletic mock-battle that showcases her speed, her grace, against their strength.  The last encounter ends as she climbs onto the strongman’s shoulders, pressing him down, springing upwards as he falls.  Her hands reach up, so silvery, so small, into the vast emptiness above.  In the wings the old ringmaster and the unseen angel both shiver, tensing sharply.  She’s flying, free-flying, and surely must fall; but it’s a calculated leap, perfectly timed; there out of nowhere the follow-spot picks up a gossamer thread, a rope ladder that glitters like spider-silk against the dark void.  The acrobat catches it in both hands, silver gloves shielding her palms as she grips on tight.  She goes straight into a wide swing, circling high over the stage.  Slowly she inverts her entire body, hanging now by one hand with her free arm outstretched, fingers uncurling like a tiny finial to her grace.  The audience cheers and applauds.

She swings back to a standstill, climbs, leaps; the high-wire, now, a dancing act full of leaps and long-held balances; from there she springs again, onto a vertical rope and a series of spins, gaining and losing speed, arching herself into elegant forms as she revolves over their heads.  She is a butterfly, a fairy, a dragonfly hovering, a drifting blossom against the sky. 

At last she comes to a standstill, tiny and bright in the spotlight, holding on by one small hand.

She lets go.  There’s a collective gasp of horror as she drops.

The angel steps forward out of the shadows, into the white circle of the stage.  His dark eyes are wide with fear. 

But the follow-spot goes smoothly down, dropping with the young woman; the fall is part of her act.  She catches the trapeze that has been secretly lowered into place while all eyes were on her spinning high above.  It’s an audacious move.  She acknowledges the cheers with a graceful arm, a bow of her head.  Behind the backdrop, two of the strongmen haul on a pulley and she ascends to the highest level yet, to begin her trapeze act, the conclusion and highlight of the show.

This is the sequence her saw her rehearse.  He knows each gesture, each precisely-timed swing, knows where it is simple and where her mind tenses in anticipation of the difficult moves.   She smiles at her audience, no sign of the danger in her face; no sign of the fear and the self-doubt inside her.  Her trust is in her skills, not in hope; there is, as always, no safety net below her, and she knows the hands of her foster-father won’t be there to catch her.  She knows, and she goes on.

Swings, turns, hangs down, flying back and forth; slides into the one-foot grip and spreads her arms wide.  Silver costume, silvered eyes and hands, silver ribbons streaming like a painted angel’s wings.  The dangerous manoeuvre comes and is done in a moment; and with a twist and a flip she’s safely back on the trapeze bar.  She knows her skills, and they are strong as the finest steel.  She stands up on the trapeze, swinging hard to gain height and speed, and leaps once again into the dark air, to catch the gossamer of her rope ladder once more and lean out from it, one hand waving, as it is lowered back to the stage.  The spotlight holds her for an instant more as she takes her bow; then winks off.  A count of three and it comes on again, to show three plate-spinners already at work.  She’s gone, backstage already, her act over.  She’s tired and happy, rubbing the silver paint and sequins from her face, smiling into the fragment of mirror.

After the show is over, he finds her with the strongman and the couple who train the dancing ponies.  They settle outside a bar in a side street near the theatre, laughing, drinking mulled wine.  They relax, joke, drink, eat nuts.  Later they begin singing quietly together. 

They split the vocal line into harmonies and laugh again when the song holds true to the end.

The angel watches them.  He knows the tune they’re singing.  He hums along, keeping his voice low although no-one will hear.  It’s an old song, reworked a dozen times over the centuries.  It warms his thoughts, to hear them paying witness to its long life, remembering a beauty from the past. 

He hovers near the group, almost at the acrobat’s shoulder; almost breathing her scent, almost touching her, almost reaching up to brush a stray spangle from her unbound hair.  When she stops suddenly and turns her head, she almost presses into his side; but he flinches back into his invisibility, and she doesn’t see him.

When the friends leave, the single fallen sequin is left gleaming on her empty seat, until his thin dark hand reaches out and takes it.

**

He meets Bodhi at dawn, at the riverbank.  The kingfisher is diving, sapphires and emeralds knifing into the water.  Bodhi’s face is bitterly sad, but Cassian feels a happiness he’s never known.  Certainty rises in him like the sun.  He’s seen his path, and it is clear.

They say their goodbyes; and if he witnesses the love and the loss in his friend’s eyes, he is too kind to speak of it.  It’s the last act of witness he can give, and there are some roads no-one can walk with you.  When they embrace for the last time, it is already beginning, and as their hands part, between one breath and the next, he’s gone.

Bodhi covers the sleeping figure gently with the old blue parka, and leaves him to awaken into life.

**

He is completely alone. 

An eternity of knowing others all around him, their thoughts and their hearts sensed as his own, their presence always nearby, soft as air; and suddenly, he can feel no-one.

He can feel other things.  Some of them, he has to search through memories of knowledge to find their names; some, he has hungered for and brooded about for as long as he’s known of them.  Cold, heat, breath, touch…

Cold.  This is cold, this prickling and tingling, this tight sensation on his skin.  He’s lying on the ground, and there’s a fine film of water on the grass blades around him, tiny droplets sparkling like the acrobat’s beads.  He touches it with an outstretched hand that has never known touch till now; touches and is instantly more cold.  And this is his hand, muscles and tendons, bones and skin, this is his own bodily perception; and this is touch.

He sits up.  Feels the coat slip from his shoulders.  Gathers it up quickly, because the cold is stronger the moment it falls.  An involuntary juddering seems to spring from his bones.  Was that a shiver?  He’s shivering.  He pulls the coat on and shivers again; a strange reaction to the increase in warmth.  He quantifies the different shivers as they modulate and change, as this body that has never felt its senses before tastes and names each sensation.  The cold is biting, intense; the coat is warm.  The fur round the collar of the coat is thick and fluffy, soft, luxurious, it touches as softly as an angel’s passing, or a child’s dreams.

But this is no dream.  Cassian is alive.

He’s never known, he thinks, moving and feeling each new movement for the first time; tasting the inside of his own mouth, his tongue pushing against his teeth; tasting air, the smells of smoke and dew, green leaves and rotten things, and savours that bring saliva, that stop him, gasping, at their sensuality.  He has never known it would be like this.  This is what it is like to thrust cold hands into his pockets, to walk, and turn his head, and feel the cold bite at his ears; to speed up his pace till he is hurrying and his breath comes fast.  This is what it feels like to have hunger take a grip inside his belly and demand to be fed.

This is what colours are really like.  He’d thought he’d known, but they have never been so vivid.  He’s had no comprehension of them till now, red and blue, grey and brown, green and white and gold.  This is why there are so many words for colour.  It’s a depth, a richness, a density beside which everything he’s known in the life before was like seeing a veil and not even knowing it covered a living face.

In the pockets of the blue parka he finds a handful of coins, a reddish pebble, a metal disc with a symbol like a stylised bird.  It looks like silver, the acrobat’s colour.  Her costume, the sequins placed so carefully, stitched to her cuffs, glued along the line of her silvered cheekbones.  The sequin he took, tying him to her.  An ache wakens inside him at the realisation.

“Bodhi,” he says to the empty street.  “I want to find her.  I need to find her.  My heart hurts for her.”

He starts to walk now, urgently, with a purpose.  He’s far away from the theatre, on the other side of a city he has only ever traversed at the speed of thought.  He tramps onward, tirelessly searching for a familiar building, a single street that might bring her near.

Perhaps Bodhi is watching.  He doesn’t see if so.  He has joined those ranks of crowded minds that see the everyday detail, but not the great cause, the act of witness.

Dawn runs to morning runs to midday, and midday walks more slowly down the afternoon and into evening.  He savours the feeling of physical hunger growing hour after hour, until suddenly it is not comfortable or comforting at all but powerfully unpleasant.  His body is sweating and shaking despite the cold.

He sees a stall in the street; counts the coins in his pocket and realises he has no inkling of what they will buy. 

Goes over to the stall and stands staring, comparing the numbers on the pieces of money and the numbers on the menu, until he thinks he’s worked out what this cash from his pocket can do.  One of those, or two of those, and a cup of that dark liquid from which steam rises lazily; if he purchases the drink and the smaller of the two foodstuffs he’ll still have a few coins for tomorrow.  After that – he must find a way.  The whole of their world is built upon this.  He will need to find a way.

He takes a step closer.  Points, and says “That, and the hot drink, please.”  Pointing, hoping. 

The young man on the stall smiles.

“A coffee and a samosa?”

“Yes?  Please?”  Cassian shuffles his coins, hoping he hasn’t miscounted or misunderstood their value.

“Lamb or vegetable?”

He chooses at random.  “Vegetable.”

“Milk and sugar?”

“I’m sorry?” – _that’s not what I asked for, is it?_

“For your coffee.  Do you want milk and sugar for it?”

“Does it cost extra?”

“No,” the stall holder says in bewilderment.

“Then –“ - _but do I want these things when I don’t even know what they are?_ – “No, no thank you.  I’m fine.”

“Okay.”  The young man smiles patiently, pouring out a beaker of the clear dark fluid, wrapping one of the flat triangular pastries.  “That’s four twenty, then, please.”

Cassian wonders what he’s thinking, this courteous boy.  Once he would have known his every nuance of thought, every hope and frustration and dream.  Now he only knows his own.  He sorts the coins carefully in his palm, picking out two large ones with the word _Two_ engraved on them, seeking for another.

“Did you only just arrive today?” asks the stall holder.

“Ah – yes.  Yes, just this morning.”  Perhaps he’s not the first to do this? – perhaps unseen Bodhi has guided him to a place where they’ve seen his kind before…

“Thought so.  Fun and games being a tourist, eh?  That’s right, two of those – and two of the copper ones – no, the middle-sized ones.  That’s it.  Thank you!”

So he’s paid.  He accepts his food.  “How could you tell I’m – new?”

“No offence, but – the way you stare, the way you’re reading everything so carefully.  And the accent is a bit of a giveaway too.”

_I have an accent?_

He unwraps the pie and takes a bite.  It’s hot, with heat of both warmth and taste.  The intensity of a dozen flavours melding in a fire in his mouth.  It’s like taking the sun between his lips, or a bolt of flame from some ancient volcanic eruption.  Cassian gasps and stares, breathing fast.  The samosa lies inanimate in his hand, a golden brown shell enclosing coloured chunks and globes, yellow and green, and a reddish paste binding them together.  It’s astonishing, this fusion of tang and sour-sweet fire and smoothness, of creaminess and crunch and chew.  Sensations focus together, voices of food in his mouth joining like a choir, and his own voice says “Ah!” helplessly.  He takes another bite.

“Good?” asks the young man. 

Cassian beams at him, astonished, filled with love for this living world and all its mysteries.

“Good!”

On impulse he puts both samosa and drink up on the serving counter again and reaches out, offering his hand as he’s seen countless people do over time.  “Thank you, my friend!”

“Ah – thank you.”

_So this is how that feels, clasping and bouncing hands like that…_

He is so happy.  He’s alive.  “I am going to eat this now.”

“Ahh – good?”

“It is very good!”

The young man smiles a little uncertainly, and Cassian leaves him and takes his food away down the road, pleased with his purchases and with having noticed he was taking up someone’s time unnecessarily.

_I can learn to do this.  I can learn._

_I am beginning.  I am happy.  I am alive._

He’s noticing it’s evening; the lights, the colours of the world, shift and change.  It grows colder as they dim and mute into shadow.  Artificial lights illuminate now, brilliant and coloured, violent, different.  He wonders if the temperature of the air and the change in its colours are connected.

If it’s dark, if it’s night now, the theatre will be opening.  People will be arriving, eager, smiling, to sit and watch the tumblers and dancers, the circling ponies, the jugglers and fools and the martial arts performers slicing pieces of house-brick in half with their hands.  She will be in her dressing room, putting on her costume, the leotard and the ribbons, the feathered cap tight over her hair, the soft flexible boots and the gloves with the grip palms.  She’ll be painting her eyes, her cheekbones, her lips; looking into her mirror, where yesterday he could rest and watch her and send her strength.  She’ll be torn between excitement and fear, once again.  As he is, thinking of her.

He tried to say _Hope_ to her last night; knows she heard him.  His mind has touched hers.  But still he must find her.  And if she bids him be gone, when he does, then he has lost his mission, his eternity, and must find a new life without her goodwill.

He prays she will see him, not the angel he was but the man he is now, and still understand.

Night-time in the streets and squares.  Crowds in bars and eating houses, happy and loud.  Tired workers heading home, beggars searching for a bed for the night.  Once he could have been at her side in an instant.  He searches wide boulevards and quiet lanes; crosses a bridge over the river, passes a vast station where night trains shudder by, weighed down with light.  At the top of a sloping street lined with restaurants he finds a big plaza, monuments, fountains.  He knows it’s nearby.  The moon is high, and he hurries. 

He’s been searching for so long, and she’s so near, so near; and he finds it.

Cirque La Festivale.  The front of the theatre is lit with bright colours and hung with banners.  He’s here, she’s here.  He sees her face in the image, the poster advertising their show; her smile is bright and real through all the paint.

People inside turn him back.  He has no ticket.  He cannot go in.

He apologises, realising what is wrong.  He’s so new, so much at the beginning of things, and he’s never had to give any mind to what people did with their money.  When they tell him the cost of the cheapest available seat he has to shrug and leave.

He goes to the street bar with the outside tables, counting his money carefully, and buys the one thing the bar man tells him he can afford.  It’s called sparkling water.  It seems right to be drinking something named for sparkling, as he waits in the hope of seeing her, who is so bright with light.

It has a taste that is no taste, gaseous, liquid in his mouth, leaping and crazy. _I’m drinking an enchantment; a glass of laughter, the hum of bees made water._

He savours it very slowly, listening to the music in the bar, and the other music under it, that comes in distant ripples and echoes from the performance next door in the theatre.  He watches the other people, their colours, their bright voices.  All of them so real, so happy to be here, so alive.  Just as he is.  The fizzing sparkle pf the water softens as the evening goes by, and becomes tender and mild in his mouth, a sensuous touch of brightness.

Every touch, every sight, smell, taste, every sound that comes echoing into his ken is sensuous tonight.  Just taking off his coat, savouring the warmth in the bar, is a new and delicious sensation.  There can never be another first night on earth.

He burns with glory, every minute, waiting.  Even if she turns him away, this is still glory, this intensity, these emotions and impressions.  Even if this night ends in grief, that feeling too will be miraculous.  He waits and waits, thrilling, shivering.  Until finally, suddenly, she is there.

Cassian stands.  For the first time he feels how breath can quicken, how a heart can thunder, volcanic, against his frail new ribs.

She’s alone, dressed not in silver but in a sleeveless blue dress patterned with flowers.  Her hair is loose, and damp from washing.  Her bare arms are muscular and shapely and pale in the lamplight.  If she permits it, he will be able to touch her.  He never could, till now.

He’s in the shadows, and she doesn’t see him; but he’s so close.  The heart pounds, raw and new in his breast.  He pours out the last of the gently singing water into his glass and stands, moving nearer to her, almost as near as he was yesterday.  She buys a glass of red wine and turns away from the bar, and is facing him.  A bare metre away, her eyes upraised to his.

Their two glasses, hers full of ruby wine and his of clear water, held side by side as though they’re about to toast one another.  There’s music playing and the voices around them are loud and cheerful, but they two stand looking, and there’s a silence around them like the dawn of time.

He remembers the deep sea, the vents that boiled with silent life, endless possibility.  Remembers the grass, the kingfisher lancing the river.  Remembers fearing for her, only a day ago.

Her lips part slowly and her eyes are wistful; she studies him, saying nothing, seeming to have nothing to say.  He does not know what can be said.  The light in the bar is dim, and darkens all colour to velvet riddles.  Her face is a rose.  He wonders what she sees when she looks at him.

He offers her his glass; and without taking her eyes from his face she raises hers too.  They exchange and raise them, and taste; the quiet clear water of innocence for her, the red wine of life for him.  Now he knows why people call wine blood, for it wakes his own blood inside him.  He sets the goblet down gently in the counter and she does likewise, so they are standing again, with hands brushing this time, and very close, so that her face is turned up to his.

She speaks quietly, but her voice still arrives unerring through the hum of noise.  “Last night I dreamed of a man with eyes like yours.  I looked into my mirror and saw another face look out.  And when he spoke to me, he told me to hope.”

Cassian rests the back of his fingers against the back of hers.  In that tiny contact, all his heartbeat gathers, wild drums beating.  He has to moisten his lips to say “I’m trembling, look…”

“So am I.”

“Do you believe in hope?”

“I do.”  She shifts her hand, and her fingers wind into his.  “I’ve tried to tell myself it’s naïve, but I know it’s real.  All good things are built on hope, and all brave things too.”

“It’s the reason I’m here.”

“Then you must be brave, too.”

Hands interlinked, eyes joined, gazing into one another’s souls.

“I hope I am,” he says.  “I hope…  I’ve given all my existence to that hope, given up every other thing there is; and now this – you, here – I saw you and – I can’t give up now.”

The crowded bar seems to spin very slowly round him, around them.  Around her eyes.  The richest colour yet, in this world unveiled.

“Usually when people see me – my act, the high wire, the trapeze, all the glitter and the lights – when they realise it’s just me underneath, an ordinary woman – they don’t stick around.  I’m supposed to be magic; a princess, a dragon.”

“Then I am sorry for them.  You are not ordinary at all.  You have changed my life.  I saw you – when your eyes looked back at me, I couldn’t hide.  Am I a madman?  I saw how you climb, how you fly, even though you are afraid of falling you fly like a creature from a fairy-tale.  I looked out from behind your mirror and all I could see was that you _are_ the mirror; I said _hope_ to you and knew that it was I that had to hope, because you were there, because you existed.   So I came to find you.  Please forgive me.”

“Will you stay?”  Their hands knot together more tightly.  “This is like a dream too.  It’s as if we’re standing in the plaza of a great city, and all the world looks to us to find the words it needs.  Tell me you’ll stay?”

“If you want me to.”

“I do.”

“Then I am with you.”

She places her other hand on the breast of his shirt.  They are so close now, he can feel the warmth of her body and her breath.  The world changes.

Did Bodhi guide him to this, or did he find her alone?  He can never know.  Those days are gone.  These days, the days of life, are upon him.

“What’s your name?  I’m Jyn, Jyn Erso.  Also known as the Rebel Angel of the High Wire!”

“I am called Cassian.”

“Welcome home to my world, Cassian.”


End file.
